


Polybius

by 2ths



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical The Flesh Content (The Magnus Archives), Mentioned Melanie King (The Magnus Archives), Mentioned Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Songfic, Urban Legends, i dont know if it really counts as a songfic, i just wrote this for funsies, its just cabinet man if it were a tma statement, jonmartin if you squint, lemon demon references, rated T for the gorey stuff, references to the Polybius urban legend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29833506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ths/pseuds/2ths
Summary: Case #0152812Statement of Neil Cicierega, regarding his encounters with an arcade machine. Original statement given December 28th, 2015.(Or, the song Cabinet Man by Lemon Demon as if it were a TMA statement. Takes place relatively mid s3 but there's only a few really vague and minor spoilers)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	Polybius

**Author's Note:**

> side note, the statement giver is named after neil just for the fun of it- he isn't actually meant to be like the real neil cicierega
> 
> content warning for blood and The Flesh typical gore, paranoia, and brief mentions of schizophrenia and smoking

[CLICK]

ARCHIVIST: 

Statement of Neil Cicierega, regarding his encounters with... an arcade machine. Original statement given December 28th, 2015. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT): 

Before I start, I guess I should clarify a few things. Most of this happened years ago, so the memory is a bit fuzzy. I didn’t tell anyone about what happened to me for a long time, because I was afraid people would say I was delusional. I heard about your institute recently, though, and I figured it might be a good idea to finally talk about it.

The story started, really, way back in the 1980s. I used to live kind of near Portland, Oregon, before moving here. There was this small arcade in my town that had been there for, well, I don’t know how long. I think it was called Coin Palace, or something like that. I was only ten at the time, and didn’t go there very often, so it’s not like I was any good at the games, but it was still a fun way to pass the time when I didn’t have anything else to do. 

There was this kid that I knew, I’m pretty sure his name was Danny. I don’t remember his last name, or if he even told it to me. You know how there were those kids that you wouldn’t really call friends, but you’d hang out with for a month or so before never talking to again? Danny was like that. He was a couple years older than me, and honestly I’m not even sure if we went to the same school. I recall meeting him while messing around with a whole group of kids, and I know the two of us clicked. Looking back, he kind of bossed me around, but I didn’t really mind back then. We started agreeing to hang out after school, and he was actually the one to show me the arcade for the first time.

Danny was a hyper kid, that I remember clearly. Usually when we played together he'd be jumping around or blabbing on about anything and everything. At the arcade, though, he was a completely different person. He'd sit down at a game and play it until he lost, then move onto the next game. He would be completely focused, barely noticing any comments I might've made. And he was good at the games, too. Sometimes it took over an hour before the difficulty finally caught up to him and he'd start losing lives. It was mesmerizing to watch. Whenever we went to the arcade together, I'd end up spending more time just watching him play than playing any games myself.

It wasn’t unusual for the arcade cabinets to come and go. Older machines would go out of order or lose popularity and be replaced by whatever hit new game had come out that year. As a kid, though, it just seemed as if the cabinets would magically appear and disappear. I had only been going to the arcade with Danny for a week or two when  _ that _ game showed up.  _ Polybius _ , it was titled. It didn’t have any of those colorful illustrations on the side to draw attention to it- it was just a plain black cabinet, aside from the color coded buttons and title in large green bubble letters. I guess it didn’t really need to be flashy, though. I never played it, but according to Danny the gameplay was unlike anything else he’d ever seen before. But from what can I remember of the times I watched people play it, it just looked like any other alien invasion defense game. 

I should point out- the Coin Palace was not a very big or popular arcade. Most of the avid arcade fans went to the bigger arcades in the area. At most, there’d be five or six other kids in there with us, so you could technically sit down at a machine and play for hours on end without anyone bothering you for a turn. The appearance of  _ Polybius _ changed all that.

The first time I saw it, Danny and I had walked over to the arcade together and were greeted with a crowd of fifteen or so other kids. That was strange enough on its own, but even stranger was the fact that they were all in line to play the same game. Danny was pissed off at the fact that our secluded little arcade was suddenly drawing in attention because of “some lame new game,” and stubbornly swore not to play it. I could tell he wanted to, though. I mean, who wouldn’t be curious of something getting that much attention. Even I kind of wanted to see what it was like. Over the next few days, the line for  _ Polybius _ grew from fifteen to nearly a hundred people. It quickly became too crowded to wait inside to play, and the line stretched down the block- which only raised more curiosity from people walking past.

For all his stubbornness, I guess Danny couldn’t ignore the game forever. I arrived at the arcade one day to find him finally playing it. He didn’t seem to notice me standing next to him, or the kids standing impatiently in line behind him. After he finally got  _ Game Over _ and had to let the next person go, he spent the rest of the afternoon rambling on and on about how amazing the game was. We played some other games that day, but his usual focus was nowhere to be seen. He just kept frantically glancing across the room towards  _ Polybius _ .

It only got worse from there. I found Danny at the arcade even when we hadn’t planned to meet up, and I realized he was starting to spend all of his free time there. He was acting different too- jumpier, and his usual chatter was even more nonsensical than before. When he stopped showing up at the park we’d play at, he claimed he didn’t remember planning to, but I was certain we did. He only ever wanted to play  _ Polybius _ . He stopped playing the other games with me, and never let me have a turn with  _ Polybius _ . I wouldn’t be any good at it, he said, which was probably true. At some point, he admitted to sneaking into the arcade at night so he could play it longer. I never knew how he did it, but I never asked. He must’ve snuck in more after that, because he started to look like he hadn’t slept properly in days.

The last time I saw Danny, he was the worst I’d ever seen him. Some teenager who must’ve been a few years older and three times Danny’s size accused him of cutting in line. Danny ignored him at first, which only made the kid more agitated. He shoved Danny away from the game, and Danny started screaming at him. Something about how he had to keep playing, how he had to win,  _ or else _ . I didn’t know what he meant by that, and I wasn’t too keen to find out. Maybe it was cowardly of me, but the whole ordeal scared me half to death so I ran home before it escalated any further. 

I didn’t see Danny again after that. I remember there was a rumor that he got into a fight, and all of us kids who only kind of knew him just assumed he’d been grounded or moved away. One thing that struck me as odd, though, was the fact that on the same day Danny seemed to vanish from my life, so did  _ Polybius _ . The day after his breakdown at the arcade, I went there in hopes of finding him- only to find the place completely empty aside from a scrawny old maintenance man.  _ Polybius  _ was gone, and with it, so were all the crowds it drew in.

After Danny disappeared, I stopped going to the Coin Palace. In all honesty, I had kind of forgotten about Danny and  _ Polybius _ entirely. That is, until a few years passed and I found myself in that arcade again.

In my later teen years, I wasn’t exactly the epitome of a good student. I’ve always had an issue with letting myself get bossed around, and that alongside some bad decisions led me down… not the best of paths. I shouldn’t get sidetracked, that’s not important. All you need to know is that I had become somewhat of a delinquent. 

At some point over the winter- right around Christmas, now that I think about it- a few of my buddies and I had been causing the usual chaos around town: smoking, tagging signs and buildings with graffiti, hiding from the cops, et cetera. That was when we found it. It might sound stupid, but I didn’t actually recognize the abandoned place as the old arcade from my childhood until we actually stepped inside. The sudden wave of nostalgia hit me, but it was tinged with an eerie anxiety. 

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that the place had gone out of business. With console games rising in popularity, plenty of arcades had been shutting down, and Coin Palace didn’t get a lot of business to begin with. Still, it was kind of saddening to see the colorful machines covered with a layer of dust, untouched in God knows how long. 

But, peer pressure made me put any hesitation I might’ve had about wrecking the place aside, and I cackled alongside my friends as we knocked around the old, broken machines and helped ourselves to any quarters remaining in them. It was fun, at the time. But then I saw it.  _ Polybius _ , standing in the same spot it had appeared all those years ago, as if it had never left. All those memories of Danny came rushing back at once, and I froze up. I stared at the machine as if it were some kind of monster, just waiting for me to make a move before it attacked. 

One of the guys I was with seemed to sense my fear. He elbowed me, a little too roughly, and laughed loudly before going up to  _ Polybius _ and spraying his tag right over the title. Something still didn’t feel right, but now the others had noticed my sudden nervousness and were making fun of me for it. It was then that I cracked. I was mad. Mad at my so-called friends for laughing at me, mad at all the things I couldn’t control at home, mad at that stupid game for driving Danny insane. I grabbed the crowbar that one of the guys had brought with him and took a swing at the screen. It shattered, sending shards of glass hazardously in our direction, but I didn’t bother to look if anyone had been hurt. In my blind rage I took another swing, this time at the side of the machine, leaving a solid dent, and again, and again. I could barely hear the others’ whoops of excitement over the pounding of blood in my ears. When I finally felt like I’d hit the thing enough, I threw the crowbar aside and started to kick it over. It fell to the ground, but the sound it made was not the loud and hollow crash that you would expect. The sound it made instead was a soft  _ thud _ , like a person had tripped and fallen. All of my anger was immediately replaced by fear as I took in the sight.

It was dark in the arcade, so we must not have noticed at first. But now, as  _ Polybius _ sat beaten and broken on its side, I spotted the unmistakable pool of _ blood _ . It dripped from the shattered screen and from the now deformed seams of the cabinet, puddling up around our sneakers. Somebody screamed. Maybe it had been me. I was shaking all over, but something compelled me to reach out and pry open the side of the machine. The memory of what I saw inside that machine still finds its way into my dreams even now. 

There wasn’t any machinery or wiring to be seen. Instead, there were… organs. Like, real, human organs. And nerves, too. As if someone had taken someone else’s insides and dumped them inside a completely hollowed out arcade machine. But it wasn’t like there had been a murder and the body was hidden there, no, that couldn’t have been the case. 

Because _ it was still alive. _ The heart was beating, slowly but steadily. The lungs took in ragged, shallow breaths. I could _ hear it breathing _ . And it had eyes. I… can’t remember if there was a face. But I remember those eyes were staring right at me through the shattered screen, and they looked at me with fear. Can something like that even feel fear? Can it  _ feel  _ anything? I picked up the crowbar again and swung directly at its heart.

It was a gorey mess. I think I threw up afterwards. I’m not really sure. The aftermath is all a blur. I know I went home after that, for the first time in a while, and the blood on my clothes made my dad freak out. He thought I’d gotten into a serious fight, and I figured it was probably better not to tell him the truth. I wouldn’t want him thinking his son was some kind of schizophrenic murderer, or something. I moved out less than a year later, and haven’t seen the arcade since. For a while, though, I had frequent nightmares about flashing old arcade games and beating hearts and eyes full of fear. I’m doing better now. I’ve turned my life around. I have a stable job now and I’ve even found myself a wife. I rarely get nightmares now.

I stopped talking to those other delinquents after the incident, so I never learned what they did afterwards, or if what I saw was even real. I know it was, though. That  _ thing _ ,  _ Polybius _ , had been alive. It had been alive, and it did something to Danny, way back then. It had been  _ alive _ , and I killed it.

ARCHIVIST: 

Statement ends. 

Quite frankly, I don’t usually pay much attention to these types of… far away… statements, for lack of a better word. Especially when the actual events of the statement took place over thirty years ago. You can see why I was reluctant to perform an extended investigation on this one. And yet… I can’t help but get the sense that it means something, that there’s a connection between this statement and some of the others we’ve dealt with. Living, human body parts being found in places they shouldn’t be… it sounds all too familiar.

I had Martin look into it. Neil Cicierega is still alive, and was relatively easy to track down. He agreed to a follow up, but Martin wasn’t able to get any extra details out of him that might confirm or deny the validity of his statement. The Coin Palace did exist, and shut down in November, 1988, but that is the extent of the information we could find on the establishment. As for _ Polybius _ , there is no evidence that such a game ever existed. Any digging into the name only came up with a couple records about a Greek historian. And... regarding Danny, without knowing his last name, there is unfortunately nothing we can do to learn the real reason for his disappearance. 

[DOOR OPENS]

ARCHIVIST: 

Ah, Martin. What is it now?

MARTIN:

_ [Quietly] _ Am I interrupting a recording? I’m sorry, I’ll-

ARCHIVIST:

It’s fine, Martin. Just tell me what you’re in here for.

MARTIN:

Right, I… I was actually going to ask, well, I was wondering if you’d like to go out to dinner with the rest of us. Tim and, and Melanie and I, I mean. I’m sure you’re too busy so it’s alright if you can’t but we thought it might be a nice distraction from… you know... everything? I figured I’d at least ask you.  _ [Nervous laugh] _

ARCHIVIST:

I… I think I’ll come along. Just let me wrap up this statement first.

MARTIN:

Really? Wow, uh, okay, cool. I’ll uh… I’ll see you in a bit then. Bye.

[DOOR CLOSES]

ARCHIVIST:

It’s upsetting to me, when details get lost like the ones in this statement. It leaves me feeling… unsatisfied, in a way. Like I’ve only been given half of a meal. But I’d prefer to avoid thinking about it like that. I would rather not think of my… desire… to know what happened in a way that might suggest I find some sort of pleasure in hearing about the suffering of others. 

I have… other things to worry about right now.  _ [Sigh] _

Recording ends.

[CLICK]


End file.
